Fragment (2)

Welcome joy, and welcome sorrow,

Lethe's weed and Hermes' feather;

Come to-day, and come to-morrow,

I do love you both together!—

I love to mark sad faces in fair weather;

And hear a merry laugh amid the thunder;

Fair and foul I love together:

Meadows sweet where flames are under,

And a giggle at a wonder;

Visage sage at pantomime;

Funeral, and steeple-chime;

Infant playing with a skull;

Morning fair, and shipwreck'd hull:

Nightshade with the woodbine kissing

Serpents in red roses hissing;

Cleopatra regal-dress'd

With the aspic at her breast;

Dancing music, music sad,

Both together, sane and mad;

Muses bright, and muses pale;

Sombre Saturn, Momus hale;—

Laugh and sigh, and laugh again;

Oh the sweetness of the pain!

Muses bright and muses pale,

Bare your faces of the veil;

Let me see: and let me write

Of the day, and of the night—

Both together:—let me slake

All my thirst and sweet heart-ache!

Let my bower be of yew,

Interwreath'd with myrtles new

Pines and lime-trees full in bloom,

And my couch a low grass-tomb.